Page 152 of Protecting What's Mine

Energized by a new fury directed at some unknown threat, Linc threw Luke off him and jumped to his feet.

“Daaaaaamn,” Skyler said when she got a good look at him.

His face felt heavy and swollen. There was a cut on his forehead that was clouding his vision with a steady trickle of blood. He wondered if his nose was broken. He looked back at Luke, who was using a chair to pull himself up to his feet. The man had a cut under his eye and one on his jaw. Bruises were already starting to bloom around his cheek and eye.

“Out of my way,” Linc growled at the firefighters in his doorway.

“You better be on your way to her house to grovel,” Luke yelled after him.

Linc flashed him a middle finger over his shoulder. “Go fuck yourself, Garrison. Someone watch my dog.”

With that, he was sprinting down the stairs to the chief’s vehicle. He punched the lights and sirens and tore out of the parking lot without a look back.

“OPEN THE DOOR,MACKENZIE,”he said, giving the front door of the cottage another pound. “I’m not leaving until you come out. I know you’re in there.”

“I’m not in there. I’m right here, and now you’re free to leave.”

He whirled around and found her on the walkway behind him. She was dressed for a run in tights and a long-sleeve shirt. She had a cap pulled down low, but he could still see. Those red lips. Her face was flushed, hair damp with sweat. Her eyes were red, probably from tears that he—the worst asshole human being in the universe—had caused. But what caught his attention now was the blooming black eye she sported.

There were more bruises ringing her neck.

He advanced on her, unable to check the barely restrained need for violence that bubbled up in him. He reached for her but stopped when she flinched.

Goddammit. He felt like a monster.

He wished Luke were here so he could pound him into the ground. “Who the fuck put their hands on you?” he asked, congratulating himself on keeping his tone even.

“Does it even matter?” she asked wearily, giving him a wide berth as she stepped around him.

She unlocked the front door and went inside. He barreled in behind her.

“Mackenzie!”

He found her in the kitchen, guzzling water.

“Go away, Linc. I’m over having visitors today.”

He planted his feet wide and crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving. Tell me who the hell did that to you.”

She looked at him, really looked at him, and her eyes went wide. “Jesus. What the hell happened to your face?”

“Luke Garrison.”

“You’re kidding me, right? He said he left here on an errand, not a beatdown.”

“Stop trying to change the subject. Who fucking hit you?”

“My sister.”

“You don’t have a sister,” he argued.

“I lied.”

He wasn’t sure where to go from there, so he planted himself on her kitchen chair.

“I lied. I withheld information about my life. And I didn’t come running to you when things went bad at my mother’s.” She stripped the gloves off her hands and shoved up her sleeves, and Linc lost his damn mind when he saw the bruises on her arms.

He reached for her and shoved her sleeves up higher to examine the marks that looked like meaty handprints.